RE-THINKING RETAIL SPACES?
If spaces can be purposefully designed, they can assist in the prevention, containment, and treatment of infectious disease, including COVID-19.
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Evaluate new safety and sanitation protocols as spatial challenges.
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New and evolving operational protocols must balance the tension between keeping staff, customers, and communities safe, while also facilitating a business model that is already operating on thin margins.
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Retailers are well equipped to manage surface contagion and containment protocols. Current regulation guidelines are thorough, yet new operational requirements present significant spatial barriers to ideal implementation.
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Retailers should continue to monitor guides and recommendations from the WHO, DoH, SAcoronavirus.co.za and others, recognising that solutions are often spatial in nature.
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Examine the spaces of your retail store with flexible reconfiguration in mind.
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Clearly identify exchange zone to mark the transition form public to private spaces.
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Develop spatial literacy and introduce additional controls.
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Ensure that sanitation control within the existing space are monitored.
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Understand that the 1-2m social distancing rule solution inside retail stores.
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It is important to sequence spaces to limit droplet spread. As The transmission of the respiratory infections from the infected to the susceptible is an indoor phenomenon.
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The requirement for customers to stay 1-2m apart in an existing retail settings, in many cases, will reduce the number of customers by 50%-70% depending on the space.
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A finer grain analysis of different types of store configurations can help to develop creative solutions to the 1-2m rule while still mitigating contagion.
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Design for trust and examine retail store with flexible reconfiguration in mind.
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Compliance with rapidly-evolving evidence about COVID-19 transmission must be made visible and legible, both from the retail employees and from customers, as this provide trust in monitored compliance.
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Install sanitation station for guests to use upon entering the exchange zone.
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Reconfiguration of display shelving for better circulation and display.
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Designate a counter space in the exchange zone for preparing, packaging, and organising orders, in order to minimise contact between the employees and the customer.
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Install durable clear dividers at tellers as extra protection between employees and customers.
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Post visible safety standards and protocols for both guests and employees.
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Provide space for employees to change clothes and don and doff PPE in a space separated from front of house.
- Technology, consider automation and eCommerce.
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